It might stop me from shaking (Matthias)

[Zephyr]

The life of a surgeon is rarely as glamorous as they make it out to be on TV. Sure, they touch on the more difficult parts of being a doctor, but they hardly dwell on them. And even when they do, it’s difficult to have a bad taste left in your mouth when the characters go back to their perfect, fabulous lives at the end of every episode. There’s a few exceptions to this format, but it’s basically how all doctor drama ever on TV works.

Silas is pretty sure he’d be tempted into murder if anyone ever made him watch any.

As it is, murder is the closest thing in his mind as he sits, slumped in his chair, head resting in his hands as if he’s too weary to lift it. And in a way, he is. There is too much wolf in his body language and he’s too fucking tired and contemplative to try and straighten the defeated looking hunch of his shoulders; the way his fingers are practically digging into his skull. Upon closer inspection, it’s clear that he is shaking, the small movements made all the more apparent by the lack of movement anywhere else on his body, and his fingers are clawed, curled desperately into his skin, as if for dear life.

The fact that there’s someone knocking on his door, pounding really, every few seconds does not help matters. Where Silas might normally be pissed at Evelyn’s constant intrusions into his private time, right now he doesn’t even seem to notice…or at least he is ignoring the increasingly frantic sounds of pounding, wanting to just curl up in his chair and let the rest of the world disappear.

“Silas! Would you just come out and fucking talk to me?” There is blatant concern in Evelyn’s voice, and Silas is not so much of a dick as to just ignore her, especially when she sounds so serious, but he can’t find the strength or care to lift himself out of his chair and close the distance between himself and the door.

None of it seems to matter right now.

[Matthias Walker]

The hospital has become as familiar as the library, the labyrinth of hallways and medical personnel only rooms as easily navigated as the old wooden bookshelves, the smell of antiseptic as instantly recognizable as of paper and glue. And Mattie has become well remembered enough at the hospital, too: The receptionist waves at him as he passes; a gaggle of interns glance at him and murmur Silas’s name in solemnly knowing tones, smothering smiles and amusement behind indiscreet palms and clipboards. He knows, he thinks, what to expect of the hospital. It may be an erratic, unpredictable place, but Mattie’s always figured himself good at reading the signs. And everything is fine. There is no panic, no underlying tension in the heartbeat of the building, and until he turns the corner to Silas’s office, his greatest concern lies in balancing the two cups of coffee in his hands.

“Eve?”

Her voice is half-hidden under the sound of her pounding on the door, and Matthias’s stomach drops. He steps up beside her, absently hands off one of the coffee cups to her—it was supposed to be for him but it doesn’t matter now, does it. He tries the door, finds it locked, and cannot find it within himself to be surprised. Silas would, and forget about lock-picking, too, at that. For a moment Matthias hesitates, hand pressed against the wood of the door, considers. Privacy is not a totally unfamiliar concept to him, but—

“I got him,” he says to Eve, already reaching into his pocket in search of a hairpin. It is not exactly standard fare for a man without the minimum required length of hair to actually pin up, but Mattie is hunter first: The lock yields in less than a minute and, his own cup of coffee left to Eve, Matthias slips into the office. He hovers on the threshold a moment, looking at Silas quietly, and then closes and locks the door behind him again.

The solitary cup of coffee is set in front of Silas in silent offering, and Mattie ignores the chair opposite Silas across the desk in favor of settling his weight on the arm of Silas’s chair, one arm settling around the doctor’s shoulders. Fingers card through the man’s hair, loose and reassuring, blue eyes searching his face for recognition, something to go off of. The mood is infectious; the gravity settles into the line of his shoulders. Then, quietly, the lighthearted humor more a chance to allow Silas time to collect himself than any expectation of earning a rare smile, “Lock like that wasn’t even a challenge, puppy, we gotta get that fixed sometime.”

Mattie distracts himself studiously smoothing the wrinkles of Silas’s suit at the shoulder for a moment, hesitating over the questions tripping over his tongue. Finally, blunt because there is no nice way to put it, because any attempts at delicacy turn foolish when Matthias is so accustomed to not censoring, “What happened?”

[/blockquote]

[Zephyr]

He’s not expecting Matthias to show up. The man’s visits have been sporadic as of late, and Silas doesn’t exactly know when to expect him, but he hears the familiar sound of something clicking the lock, and then the breeze from the door opening and closing brings with it the achingly familiar scent of the man in question, and Silas does not want Matthias to see him this way…so useless and so fucking pathetic that he can’t stand it; finds himself curling in on himself a little more, clawed fingers bending a little sharper to dig into his hairline, breath coming faster as Matthias walks closer.

The coffee is taken in with a sweep of his eyes and he barely lifts his head as Matthias sits, so not accustomed to melting into the hunter’s touch that he tenses up when Matthias’ arm falls over his shoulder with the strain of keeping himself from leaning into the touch.

He doesn’t feel like talking, doesn’t feel like laughing, but Matthias joke is said so fucking somberly, that Silas can’t keep a bitter, humorless chuckle from breaking his silence. “I guess I’ll just have to work harder next time to keep you out.” Even if he hadn’t been trying to keep Matthias out specifically, just the world as a whole, but if there’s anyone he wants to try and bring him out of his wallow, it’s this fucking brat. The tension in his shoulders melt away at Matthias’ touch and he drops one hand to his desk to curl fingers around the cup of coffee.

For once, he doesn’t feel like drinking it, no matter how much the burn at the back of his throat will be welcome. He just draws it toward him, trapping it in the hook of his wrist like a lifeline, using the head of the cup to bring him back to reality. When he drops his other hand, it’s a minor miracle that his head doesn’t just fall to the desk with the weariness making its way through his body.

Finally he lets himself lean into Matthias bodily, keeping his gaze very stubbornly on the cup of coffee because he doesn’t want to look into Matthias’ eyes, see the expression that might be lurking there. Pity, disgust, anger? He doesn’t know, and he isn’t sure he wants to know which it is. He’s silent for a time, tapping his fingers against the cup. He’s trying to decide if he should tell Matthias what’s wrong and what he should even say that won’t come off as whiny. At last he just licks his lips and gets into it.

“I don’t normally let these things bother me…you know? I have a pretty fucking thick skin.” He says with a wry smile, and while his words don’t really explain anything at all, he is smiling like they do. “And, it shouldn’t have gotten to me. The kid was fucking fine. He’d come in with a car crash. His father and older sister had been found doa. We didn’t even fucking know where the kid’s mom was.” He takes a breath, tracing intricate designs in the Styrofoam for a moment. “Fucking adorable too. He was joking and laughing about the things he and his father were going to do. They were fucking on their way to camping. He was showing us magic tricks before he went under. God. He was so fucking cute.”

Silas swipes his tongue over his lips again, tightening his fist around the cub just enough to make dents in it. “He was fine, we fixed the bleeding in his brain and the kid woke up and everything. Asked us if his dad was coming soon…that there was a magic trick he wanted to show him.” Finally, he looks up at Matthias, eyes hard and almost pleading. “What the fuck was I supposed to tell him? I told him his dad’d be there soon. I fucking lied to him.” A snort and he lowers his head, brushing fingers through his hair. “The kid crashed soon after that. Some rare reaction to the painkillers or something. It shouldn’t have happened, but the ER was such a clusterfuck with that crash and multiple casualties."

He curls into himself a little more, a sick feeling in the pit of his stomach. He turns slightly away from Matthias, leaning over the desk a little. “We fucked up…I fucked up and a kid is dead because of it. I fucking killed him, and no one cares because it was an accident.” A growl rumbles in his chest and he removes his hands from the cup so he doesn’t crush it and get coffee all over the place. Instead he fists one hand in Matthias’ hoodie, holding on for dear life. “It’s like he didn’t even matter to them, that I killed him and everyone called me a hero for saving a few people. How is that fair? That isn’t even justice.”

The trembling doesn’t lessen, if anything it intensifies as Silas grip on Matthias tightens. His voice is very soft and bitter. “I’m no fucking different than the monsters you hunt. I just have an excuse and a license.”

[Matthias Walker]

There is a moment when Silas is stiff, unresponsive, under the gentle pressure of Mattie’s arm around his shoulders, when he even curls in tighter on himself like he wants to pull away, and the way he laughs speaks volumes. Mattie isn’t exactly a world-class comedian, but when it comes to Silas, he has spent long enough coaxing out the reluctant grins, the genuine chuckles, to recognize the bitter note when he hears it. Silas’s words dignify no response; the joke is unimportant and what the fuck ever is bothering Silas—Mattie’s mind jumps instinctively to the pack, to the framework of secrecy and the many ways Silas must be bending the rules, and then to Zander—well, it’s probably not so easily fixed with a charming smile and a throwaway quip.

At least, though, at least Silas leans into him after a moment, and begins to talk, and Matthias lets him. Mechanically, his fingers find the nape of Silas’s neck, thumb drawing reassuring circles against warm skin, and oh.

So this is what it’s about, then.

Not the wolves, not the million things that go unspoken, not the hunting: A boy. A kid who died (an avoidable death, isn’t that what they call it) too young and a doctor who cares too much, and Mattie is so utterly unequipped to deal with this. Where years of hunting could tide him over with wolves, where selfishness could have proven useful in love affairs, maybe, but this? This is life and death in a different way, something bigger than one kid and one mistake, except Mattie just—he can’t. He doesn’t see it, doesn’t feel it: He has had the blood of countless people on his hands before, has seen people die, has seen the families mourn; he has made the mistake of getting attached.

This kid, though? At least he died thinking his family was alive. At least he died happy. At least he died with a doctor that gave a damn. At least he died and is remembered, instead of one more statistic thrown into shitty car safety advertisements and touted as an unspeakable tragedy, as a person: It’s more than Mattie expects, and however sorry he is that the kid died, it is a selfish grief that stems from seeing Silas like this instead of from the inescapable fact that there is a child, a boy that will be missed, a boy that was loved, lying dead in the morgue.

He doesn’t have the time or the will to feel sorry for the whole damn world, tragic injustice or not, and what Silas is feeling, the way he curls up and shakes with the guilt, he just—

It was an accident. Silas knows it was an accident, and it doesn’t seem to make a difference, and Mattie cannot fucking understand it. Were neurosurgeons even responsible for painkillers? Was the rest of the hospital so fucking incompetent that Silas felt like he was the only one who could’ve done something? And aren’t doctors prepared to cope with this shit? The very logic of it is so utterly flawed, and Mattie can deal with grieving relatives—albeit with an endgame in mind—or with victims of the supernatural but this, this kind of grief and guilt and Silas’s conviction of his own wrongness—he isn’t a fucking shrink.

There is no part of this Mattie is comfortable with.

“You—” His fingers press tighter against the nape of Silas’s neck, and he exhales, and God, he is so fucking tired of being useless. “Accidents happen; mistakes happen. People die.” It has been years since Mattie’s had cause to say it out loud but once upon a time it was a commonly repeated mantra, repeated over and over until the syllables became mechanical and instinctive. “You can’t save everyone, you can’t stop trying anyway. Silas, look, I’m sorry, but it sounds like an accident, and if you think that’s the same as deliberately killing someone, then—” He shrugs, helpless, “Then I’m sorry, but no, you aren’t a monster, and it sucks, but it’s a hell of a lot better than not doing anything.”

[/blockquote]

[Zephyr]

He isn’t sure what he expects Matthias to say; what he expects the other man to do. This is so far out of Silas’ own comfort zone that he can only imagine how the hunter feels hearing it. Silas assumes that the only thing keeping Matthias put is his misplaced loyalty to Silas, or whatever the fuck her feels for the surgeon.

Whatever he expects, it isn’t what Matthias says. Silas inhales sharply, squeezing his eyes shut and tensing up a little bit. The idea that he can’t save everyone is something that he struggles with every single day, but it’s something he’s usually pretty good at ignoring. Having Matthias say it in an attempt to comfort Silas – is that what he’s doing – doesn’t really have the intended effect. Instead of saying anything, Silas just presses himself against Matthias, soothes by the mechanical stroking to the back of his neck. He half buries his face in Matthias’ hoodie, sighing heavily.

It’s like a slap to the face, almost, Matthias’ words. He finds he expected comfort from the hunter. What he gets is judgment instead. Silas’ mouth is dry and he half thinks about pulling away from Matthias, shutting down and shutting him out in favor of just wallowing in his own misery some more.

He makes a mental note to keep whatever he’s feeling inside from now on, because no matter how good it might feel to get shit out, it isn’t worth alienating one of the only people Silas truly trusts. Pushing Matthias away now would be devastating, and if the hunter can’t deal with things that upset Silas, then the surgeon can just keep those to himself from now on.

“Whatever.” Silas says, only half pulling away from Matthias, pushing his own reservations away as unimportant for the moment. He pulls the slightly battered cup of coffee towards him, taking a sip to clear his mind. “M’sorry I tried to drag you into this. You never signed on to hear my problems, especially when they’re stupid.” His eyes remain fixed on the cup for a moment while he speaks, lost for a second before he looks up at Matthias with a grin that is half forced, nudging the kid playfully with his arm. “What’s up with you?”

Changing the topic is something Silas is good at. Injecting lightheartedness into the situation is an attempt by the surgeon to keep Matthias from thinking anymore about Silas’ problem. He’s content to forget about said problem if Matthias lets it drop.